Allegra Krieger - Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine Review
A masterful, unforgettable offering, it is an exciting new phase in Krieger’s artistic direction which has shown a succinct reinterpretation of what modern songwriting can be.
Death has served as catalyst for songwriters throughout the years. From Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ to Patti Smith’s ‘Elegy’, a number of musicians have found some of their most poignant works rooted in chronicles of loss and contemplation of the afterlife. Though sometimes, it’s not so direct.
Allegra Krieger appears to be one of New York’s best kept secrets. The singer-songwriter debuted in 2020 with her first album ‘The Joys of Forgetting’, followed by ‘Precious Thing’ and ‘I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane’ in quick succession. Krieger paces on an existential tightrope; neither here nor there, but somewhere in between. Her style evokes the folk-inspired craft of Joni Mitchell and the emotional labyrinth of Leonard Cohen, though elaborately reimagined. Allowing herself to swim through endless reflective plunge pools and hardly coming up for air, Krieger narrates her experiences in a way that makes her seem perennial, as though she can look you in the eye and say “hey, I’ve lived your life”. However, she’s only human, and makes every effort to explore what this means.
The compelling need to understand one’s condition became more urgent for her latest album, ‘Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine’, to be fully realised. Death is a catalyst, even if it’s only a brush. Krieger’s fourth full-length album was largely written in the months that followed a harrowing night in which a combustion of lithium batteries in a shop below her apartment sent the building in flames. Barrelling down eight flights of stairs through smoke-filled air, she escaped, breathing her rumination on life and death into the record. Unlike her previous work, Krieger’s ideals are illustrated with the help of a full band. The result is a riveting maturation of all the places where she has been, and the uncertainty of where she’ll find herself next.
Opener ‘Roosevelt Avenue’ possesses a hopeful warmth in sound as Krieger recounts passing observations down Roosevelt Avenue, as though she’s versing notes to self. Her surroundings enmesh themselves with existential contemplations, clearly setting the tone for much of the album’s thematic content in just a few lines: “Pleasure seeking animal instinct/ You don’t have a home/ You’re just a fleck of light passing by/ Ticking like a metronome/ Keeping time, looking for signs/ Something divine/ Something to enlighten or align.” From that point, you enter a journey of Allegra Krieger’s search for meaning.
As singles ‘Never Arriving’ and ‘Came’ follow, they not only inform the narrative of the search, but also begin to demonstrate the depth that is brought by the full-band arrangements. Scorned, dissatisfied riffs accentuate Krieger’s acceptance of a relationship which finds its natural end. There are no hard feelings by the end, but the shrill, distorted melody tells of an underlying turmoil felt through the process. The brazen guitars wander into ‘Came’, which sees Krieger separate from a physical relationship with another, seeking inward through self-gratification. There’s a slow build of meandering notes and gently tapping percussion which hones in on a desperate, strung-out bid for connection. It climbs to a dramatic outro of orgasmic proportion, as Krieger releases a pent-up numbness in a striking crescendo. It’s here that the band really shows their understanding of how to portray Krieger’s emotional dynamics with an energy that is brilliantly matched.
Embodying light in some form is a regular motif throughout the record. From moving with the transience of a flicker of light in ‘Roosevelt Ave’, a glaring affirmation of “now you’re a star, or a God, or a flame,” in ‘Came’, there’s a push of warmth and illumination which seems to correlate with Krieger’s experience of feeling at full capacity. This manifests more directly on ‘Burning Wings’, in which she proclaims “I want you/ To come inside/ Of me tonight/ To feel some light/ Grow from within,” as cooly as you might expect someone to ask for a simple favour. Yet it’s not so simple, rather it’s an inconclusive desire for intimacy that plays like an angelic dream. Krieger’s guitar trickles from the clouds like the notes of a harp, her voice reaching a gossamer falsetto. Facing reality, the sought after light is all too capable of singeing, leaving Krieger in a roundabout of discontented comings and goings.
Consolidating an enduring physical existence weaves most of the tracks together. Krieger cynically talks through the burden of bearing witness to beauty and tragedy on ‘Into Eternity’, an onerous bystander effect. While occasionally lost in extrospection, she also tasks herself with reaching a point of forgiveness for self-destruction in ‘Absolve’. But the true emotional climax and summation of these complicated sentiments unfolds on ‘One or the Other’ as Krieger confronts her experience in the fire. There’s a sting of survivor’s guilt which adds to the complexity of her account as reflects on the loss of her second floor neighbour and their last interaction, asking what she could have done differently to save a life. This is easily the hardest track to take on. It is heavy, as the weight of responsibility that Krieger comments on is crushing and strongly felt both lyrically and within weary instrumentation. It ultimately leads to one question and a simple answer: “What do you know about living?/ What do you know about dying?/ Other than you just do what you do/ Yeah it’s one or the other.” The response is jaded, and it's clear that Krieger is worn out in her search of what it all means. You can either live or die, embracing them as they are or ultimately suffering in defiance of the inevitable.
In thirteen songs, Allegra Krieger challenges herself to face her past, present, and a future that she cannot thoroughly envisage. In doing so, she has braved the difficult and unanswerable, culminating in her best work to date on ‘Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine’. While Krieger has been a soul-stirring powerhouse on her own, collaborating with a band on ‘Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine’ completely brought the full spectrum of her experience to life. A masterful, unforgettable offering, it is an exciting new phase in Krieger’s artistic direction which has shown a succinct reinterpretation of what modern songwriting can be.